Posts tagged Nin-Pole Residence

Once in a rare while, the opportunity comes along to visit a fabled treasure that is normally a well-kept secret and off-limits to the general public. I was familiar with stories about the house, where Eric Lloyd Wright, grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright and a distinguished architect in his own right, designed a home for his half-brother Rupert Pole and Anais Nin, the famous feminist and writer in 1962. It was the architect�s first solo commission; he returned to the site on November 20, 2010 for an interview with the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council History Collective(SLNCHC). Bob Herzog, Co-Chair of the Committee invited me along, to document and photograph the participants and the occasion. Also on hand were the architect�s son and daughter-in-law, Devon and Marion �Tree� Wright, and Jenifer Palmer-Lacy, who conducted the interview.The glass, concrete and wood house is located on the precipice of a hill on the east side of Silver Lake, overlooking the reservoir and the Moreno Highlands in the west. Wright, in the interview, reminisced about his relationship with his clients; his half-brother, Rupert Pole and Anais Nin, the famed feminist and author, who shocked the literary world with frank details about her sexual escapades, including her relationship with author Henry Miller and his wife, made public in the book, �Henry and June�. She lead a double life, being married to Pole, her �west coast� lover, and her New York husband, Hugh �Hugo� Guiler, with whom she kept an apartment in Manhattan. Neither spouse was aware of the other; although she married Pole in 1955, the marriage was nullified 11 years later after she confessed that she was already married. She would return to Pole, 16 years her junior, to spend her final years together with him in the Silver Lake house, until her death in 1977. The house was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument(No. 892) in 2007.

Nin-Pole Residence, Eric Lloyd Wright, Architect 1962The house was to have a single bedroom, inasmuch as the couple had no children and didn’t want guests staying the night. The bedroom is off the living room; the folding doors, seen here were never closed.

A continuous wall of windows and sliding glass doors capture the view of the swimming pool, mountain, sky, and lake. In her ‘Dairy’, Author Anais Nin described the house as ‘one large studio, no separate, small partitions. It had the sense of space of Japanese houses; it had the vista of a Japanese screen, all sky, mountains, lake, as if living in the out-of-doors.’